Mission:

The ultimate goal of my research program is twofold: (1) to characterize and understand the (neuro-)cognitive and affective processes underlying core aspects of social vision, aversive learning, cognition-emotion interactions, emotional reactivity, and pain perception, (2) to apply the basic knowledge of core processes obtained from studies of healthy populations to better delineate the dysfunctions of basic (neuro-)cognitive and affective processes in fear, anxiety, and pain.   

Main Research Topics:

1. Experimental psychopathology:

• Biased threat processing in transdiaggnostic anxiety
• Electro-cortical correlates of fear conditioning, extinction learning, and fear generalization
• Neural correlates and differentiation of anticipatory anxiety and phasic fear
• Contextual influences on face processing

2. Experimental pain research:

• Affective modulation of pain
• Affective and cognitive determinants of placebo and nocebo effects
• Anticipation of pain and its relationship to anxiety
• Regulation of acute pain